A mile-high look at modern US history. Is it true most male flight attendants are gay? Was it ever? How did their legal battles with airlines help advance gay rights and workplace gender equity? Is the tale of “Patient Zero” – a steward accused of being the initial transcontinental spreader of HIV – accurate? Stow your tray tables and put your seats in their fully upright and locked positions for a quick flight through the history of airline stewards. Eric Jansen's guest is Philadelphia University history professor Phil Tiemeyer, author of Plane Queer: Labor, Sexuality and AIDS in the history of male flight attendants, published by University of California Press.

Award winning Indian Filmmaker Rituparno Ghosh died suddenly at the age of 49 last week. At a time when rising acceptance of alternative sexuality in India has meant increasingly hard-coded labels — lesbian, gay, MSM, bisexual, transgender — Rituparno blurred all the boundaries with his androgyny. “It is for me to decide whether I will stand in the queue for men or for women or neither of the two,” he once said.